You're Allowed to Still Hurt

Ram Dass wrote,

“Healing does not mean going back to the way things were before, but rather allowing what is now to move us closer to God.”

There is something you think you should be “over with” by now!

You know exactly what it is.

The grief of a friend’s death five years ago.

The divorce that catches you as you fill out a form.

The sting of a comment from years ago, still remembered word for word.

The lie someone told that you can’t forgive.

Sometimes if feel that even our grief is expected to be punctual!

Everyone else moves on.

Something in me is broken and slow.

And we are not just hurting anymore.

We are failing to heal.

But this long memory does not help us.

The opposite. It doubles every wound.

A sad day is no longer one dose of suffering. It is two.

The pain itself.

And the lateness of the pain.

And underneath both, the fear you haven’t said out loud:

What if I’m not really healing?

What if this is just me now?

But there is an answer to why you keep returning to it.

It is not that something in you is broken.

There is no schedule for grief. There never was one.

Your returning is something else entirely.

Ram Dass named it. And once you see it, the shame lifts.